Global Civil Society Across the Mediterranean: The Case of Human Rights

Abstract

The concept of global civil society began to be used regularly just a decade ago. Its formulation results from the application of the civil society concept to transnational political processes. This article reviews the networks created in recent years in the field of human rights in the Mediterranean and investigates to what extent these are exponents of the emergence of an alleged global civil society. Links and exchanges between very diverse human rights advocacy groups have multiplied in recent years and transnational constituencies have been forged. But the existence of this ‘global civil society’ can hardly be identified as if it were a global player. It would be more appropriate to speak of the existence of parcels of an international (and internationalized) civil society.